Read Threads - Fight Fascism

Epic Twitter threads to help fight the fascist creep

In the before times, I wrote limericks on Twitter about a salty one-legged gull that swore and smoked, and mooched all my liquor. I shared photos of punk shows and birding, and I documented a milkweed plant that I nurtured until caterpillars became butterflies and exquisitely unfolded from their jewel-like chrysalis and flew away.

Then came the attack on our country in 2016, and Twitter was the battlefield. A war for truth was raging all around, and enemy combatants were using Twitter to sell unreality, to sell the conspiracy theories so necessary to stoke early stage autocracy. When people stop believing their eyes and ears, they are malleable to the strongman injection.

I saved the memes that were detonated to virtually assassinate Hillary Clinton by that creep Prigozhin. As a women who tries to send light to even the darkest places and the most corrosive souls, I find it challenging to not wish anything but a swift tribunal for Putin’s henchman. He attacked our country with his troll operation and is attacking Ukraine with his mercenary militias of sociopathic murderers.

Distraught in 2016 about the theft of our presidency, I - like many others - turned to Twitter to defend truth and expose the cons. It became a full-time job. Because of my media reach, I became a target for the cons. Truth is their kryptonite and anyone with influence got in the crosshairs of these gangsters. No rear areas in information warfare.

I just kept going.

I found myself reading the Mueller Report in April of 2019. I realized that the only way I was going to personally get the word out about the contents of the report was to start threading it in bite-size pieces. Seth Abramson had perfected the art of the long-form thread, and I thought, what have I got to lose?

As a docunerd who reads indictments like people watch sports, I knew that most would not read the report. I also saw how Bill Barr the Fixer was selling dismissive bullshittery to the American people about the contents contained therein. Anyone who read the report could see that Trump was owned by the Russians, showing fealty to Putin at every turn, as was his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who worked for Trump pro bono so he could “get whole” with Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch he owed money to. The same Deripaska that FBI counterintelligence officer Charles McGonigal was working for. The same Deripaska behind the make-work project in Kentusky. The same Deripaska who had Bob Dole on his payroll. You get the picture.

So on Easter weekend in 2019 with a terrible cold, I plowed through the Mueller Report and tweeted a 90+ tweet thread. Threading about Trump-Russia on Twitter would become my life’s work. The global reach was staggering, each thread garnered hundreds of thousands of impressions, and I made contact with activists and experts in countries throughout the world. These contacts would prove vital when launching RadPod, which in 60 episodes has featured the greatest minds of our times in combatting information warfare.

I feel blessed as I write this now. In moments like this I forget the pain and just feel the satisfaction of doing the work. It was my threads that got the attention of the Byline Times team, which is truly where I have done the best work of my career. Journalism has changed, and so have I.

We are in a war for truth, and it requires different tactics.

Just as I laid out books to read, films to watch, quotes to ponder, and words to defend - in order to deepen your fascist-fighting arsenal - I believe these threads contain great value. I compiled all my political Trump-Russia writing predating my first thread in “It’s Komprocated - Vol. 1.” Teachers and librarians had requested I put all my reporting in one place so I did.

For those who aren’t yet members, you can find my threads attached to my pinned tweet @heidi_cuda … For members, please read on for a list of my most important threads, with summaries and highlights, to offer illumination for our fight…